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1. I’ve never understood people who get fired up by an NFL head coach’s introductory press conference.
While it helps to have a coach who isn’t combative with the media, “winning” a press conference is a completely useless, made-up media thing that has absolutely nothing to do with whether a guy will be a good head coach or not.
Case in point: Giants coach Joe Judge.
The headlines after Judge’s introductory press conference on Jan. 9, 2020 were glowing. Judge gave some good soundbites, so everyone was all-in on Judge before he even coached one game in his new role.
When a coach performs well at this introductory press conference, in the media’s eyes, it usually has to do with the fact that he rants about his team being tough and how his team will hit their opponents harder than any other team, blah, blah blah.
Here’s the thing: If your team is tougher than any other team in the NFL, but the head coach doesn’t know how to run a two-minute offense, doesn’t know how to manage the clock and doesn’t know when to call timeout, toughness is irrelevant.
I understand that all people can do before a coach has actually started a season is report on what they say, so if Judge was personable, that’s the narrative. But a little restraint would be nice. Just because somebody can be personable at a press conference doesn’t mean they’ll know how to coach a game properly.
Joe Judge does not know how to coach a game. Last night, Judge gave us a double display of ineptness.
New York put forth one of the worst two-minute drills you’ll never see at the end of the first half, and then Judge let 35 seconds roll off the clock without calling a timeout before the two-minute warning at the end of the game when his team needed every second they could get to try and drive into field goal range.
Does some blame go to the players for not executing? Sure. Does some blame go to the offensive coordinator for terrible play calling? Sure. But, as head coaches like to say in press conferences, the buck stops with them. There is plenty of blame to go around for the Giants’ failures over the past two years, but Judge is the head coach so he takes the hits. Not to mention, his overall record as New York’s head coach is 8–16.
I’ve often said the only head coach in the entire league who knows how to run the clock and timeouts properly is Bill Belichick. Judge is far from the only inept head coach in the league. But there are degrees of bad, and the display in Kansas City on Monday was glaring. Even Petyon Manning couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
This is a sampling of headlines that appeared across the World Wide Web after Judge’s first meeting with the media.
I don’t think there is a Giants fan alive who would run through a wall for Joe Judge today, even though he once won a press conference.
2. Florida State–Clemson gave us the Bad Beat of the Year, and to no one’s surprise, Scott Van Pelt and Stanford Steve did it justice in their weekly segment last night.
3. Packers-Cardinals last week was the fifth-most-watched game since Thursday Night Football started in 2006, drawing 20.2 million viewers. The most viewed was a Saints-Cowboys game in ’18 that brought in 21.3 million viewers.
Meanwhile, Sunday night’s Vikings-Cowboys game was the lowest-rated Sunday Night Football game of the season for NBC, pulling in 15.7 million viewers going head-to-head with Game 5 of the World Series on Fox, which drew an impressive 13.6 million viewers.
Fox’s late Sunday window, which featured Bucs at Saints, was watched by 21.3 million people.
4. The highlight of Monday night’s ManningCast was Peyton boorishly eating a piece of chicken during halftime and Eli mocking his brother’s lack of grace and decorum.
Other hits included Peyton talking about his dad’s “stud fee.”
And former Giant Michael Strahan going crazy when his team threw a 1-yard pass and third-and-4.
The Mannings will be off this coming Monday and then back in Week 10 for Rams-Niners.
5. Looking forward to this doc that debuts on Nov. 19. The Janet Jackson–Justin Timberlake Super Bowl controversy is easily a top-10 “Imagine If Twitter Was Around” moment.
6. The guest on this week’s SI Media Podcast is former Super Bowl champion Chris Long. Long, who currently hosts the Green Light podcast and appears on Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night Football pregame show, talks about the best game of the NFL season, Tom Brady’s giving us more of his personality after leaving New England, his appearance on the ManningCast and why the ManningCast is so good. Long also gives some sound advice to all the sports bettors out there.
Following Long, Sal Licata from WFAN radio and SNY TV in New York joins the podcast for our weekly “Traina Thoughts” segment. Topics covered this week are college football’s ridiculous overtime rule, World Series buzz and the premiere episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify or Stitcher.
You can also watch the SI Media Podcast on YouTube.
7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: I’ve posted this guy before in Traina Thoughts and he nails it again with this one.
Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Stitcher. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter and Instagram.
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